Why Kevin Rudd would be a poor choice as Anthony Albanese’s US ambassador

Anthony Albanese was quick to shoot down reports he’d hand Kevin Rudd a plum job should Labor win the election. Little wonder considering the diplomatic disaster of the Rudd years, writes James Morrow.

Consider that a bullet dodged.

After a bit of speculation that Anthony Albanese would send Kevin Rudd to be our man in Washington were he to win government, the opposition leader has comprehensively shot down the idea.

“Complete nonsense,” Mr Albanese said Tuesday morning.

Good.

The idea that Mr Rudd of all people should be put in charge of our relationship with the US is one of those things that sounds great for about three seconds, until you start to think about it.

Labor leader Anthony Albanese and Kevin Rudd last year. Picture: AAP Image/Darren England

Even Bill Shorten gave the idea cautious support this morning saying “we could do worse in Washington than Mr Rudd”. Really? We could also do a hell of a lot better.

Australia has no more important relationship than with the United States.

The Americans are the people we hope will come to our aid, should worst come to worst.

But while the temptation to give Mr Rudd something to do other than fire off poison pill tweets and press complaints is understandable, it’s about as wise as a six-year-old eating all his Easter chocolate in one go.

It’s as if everyone has forgotten the diplomatic debacle of the Rudd years.

People still remember Rudd screaming at a climate conference about being rat something-or-othered by China, but they also forget that his time in government both as prime minister and foreign minister was strewn with political wreckage.

Kevin Rudd in Beijing in 2008. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)

Bill Shorten says “we could do worse in Washington than Mr Rudd”. Picture : NCA NewsWire / Ian Currie

In 2008, then-Prime Minister Rudd effectively killed off the first attempt to get the “Quad”, or Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, off the ground.

We now know that the re-established Quad, bringing together Australia with the US, Japan, and India, is rapidly becoming an important piece of our diplomatic and security architecture.

But when he was PM, Master Diplomat Rudd didn’t think it so hot an idea at all.

To make it worse, Mr Rudd sent his foreign minister Stephen Smith out to kill off the idea at a press conference with his Chinese foreign minister.

Since then Mr Rudd has tried to exculpate himself from blame for this incident, but whatever was going on behind the scenes the whole affair made it look like Australia was doing China’s bidding in killing off an initiative Beijing found threatening.

Former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd at the National Press Club in Canberra. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

Perhaps Mr Rudd didn’t like the Quad because it wasn’t his own idea.

What was his own idea was a cockamamie scheme called the Asia Pacific Community, or APC, which he instead tried to push when in government.

It seemed like a great idea on the back of a cocktail napkin: Bring together the region’s powers to work together to balance China and prevent calamity.

Only thing was, it was such a brilliant idea the man being put forward as Australia’s Kissinger didn’t tell anyone.

Leaked cables revealed that the US embassy in Canberra complained to Washington that the plan was “hastily rolled out, with minimal consultations.”

Japan, too, was only consulted two days before the idea was announced, everyone else involved was caught flat-footed, and the idea died an ignominious death.

Add this history to his overweening ego and sense of self, his well-documented inability to run an office (“bring out your dead!”, Julia Gillard would shout in the ministerial wing of parliament during her stints as Acting Prime Minister as she signed off on snow drifts of briefings and appointments left unacted upon by Mr Rudd), and the constant threat that he would act more like a prime minister in exile rather than Australia’s representative and the problem becomes clear.

No, if Mr Rudd is to get an overseas posting, let it be to go oversee the Cocos Islands or the Australian Antarctic Territory or some such place where he can give interviews to the penguins or lecture the coral instead.

Originally published as Why Kevin Rudd would be a poor choice as Anthony Albanese’s US ambassador